The use of computing devices, such as personal computers, tablets, smartphones and the like, is widespread today. These computing devices use binary files that, if corrupted, or in the event of a failure of the equipment where they are stored, can lead to a loss of valuable information which sometimes cannot be replaced, leading to economic consequences.
In order to recover a computer system from a catastrophic failure of the data storage device, such as a disk, it is not only necessary to replace the hardware, but it is also necessary to be able to restore the data and software configuration. To protect against such loss, it is standard business practice to maintain a backup data storage device set that consists of an up-to-date image of the operating system, applications software and the data files. Thus, modern computing devices are equipped with storage devices to make copies of such files. These storages devices include high capacity storage disks with writable CD ROMS, or the like.
Current computing devices utilize processes of backing up data by creating a disk image (i.e., an image backup) while excluding unused or “free” space from the image in order to save space in the data storage system or device as a whole. For example, FIG. 1 illustrates a representative data backup process according to a conventional method. As shown, a source disk 101 of a computing device, for example, includes used space 102 (denoted by cross hatchings) and free space 103. According to such convention methods, when a computing device generates a backup image 104, the backup image only contains used space or actual data of the source disk 101. The free space 103 is excluded from the backup image 104.
According to such conventional computing devices and backup methods, the free space 103 can typically be excluded from the final backup image 104 because the backup application (i.e., a backup software application, backup agent or the like) has the support of the file system in that the backup application knows how the data is arranged and can understand which sectors of the memory are filled with data and which sectors of the memory are free.
However, in other instances, the backup application may attempt to make a backup of the partition or disk with an unsupported file system. In these cases, the computing device can use a so-called “RAW” backup method where the whole partition or disk is backed up sector-by-sector, regardless of whether each sector contains any valid data or does not contain data. Of course, it should be appreciated that this “RAW” backup method does not eliminate unused or free space of the final image. Accordingly, there is a need for a data backup process for such unsupported file systems, i.e., the file system of the computing device is not support by the backup software application.